He plunged straight down; no questions of funeral preparations or mourning bonnets arrested him for a second.

"My father is dead," Jerome told himself; "he jumped into the pond and drowned himself, and here's mother, and Elmira, and the mortgage, and me." This poor little _me_ of the village boy seemed suddenly to have grown in stature, to have bent, as it grew, under a grievous burden, and to have lost all its childish carelessness and childish ambition.
Jerome saw himself in the likeness of his father, bearing the mortgage upon his shoulders, and his boyish self never came fully back to him afterwards.

The mantle of the departed, that, whether they will or not, covers those that stand nearest, was over him, and he had henceforth to walk under it..